The Dull and Boring Year at Hogwarts
by Lyndotia
Summary: Harry Potter and the Dull and Boring Year at Hogwarts is a parody of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Wow, Harry stay out of trouble? This MUST be a fanfiction.
1. The Boy Who, Well, Lives

Disclaimer: I do not own HP or any of the copyrighted stuff.

A/N: Yay, a parody! XD This was actually the first fanfic that I started planning on writing for publishment, but I got distracted because of a lot of drama with my family and didn't feel much like comedy. I'm not sure how good it will be, but hey, you all are the judges of that.

Oh, and if you have a moment, please write a review! I want to know what everyone thinks, and what I should improve on.

**Chapter One -- The Boy Who... Well... Lives**

Vernon and Petunia Dursley were perfectly normal citizens of Little Whinging, Surrey. They lived in number four, Privet Drive, and had a young son named Dudley. Vernon worked as the director of a company that made drills, while Petunia remained at home to care for Dudley. Okay, so they had weird names; but other than _that_, they were perfectly normal.

At least, that's what most people thuoght. None of them had noticed that the Dursleys avoided the topic of Petunia's family, that they dressed their son up in bonnets that made him look like a beach ball, that they despised all mention of anything extraordinary, or that they randomly yelled at random people for random reasons that often didn't make a lot of random sense. Apparently, a lot of people in Surrey were either very inobservant or very stupid. Maybe both.

Then one day, onto this scene burst a cat. This wasn't just any cat, though; it was a gray tabby cat. With markings around its eyes. Who could read disappearing maps and green street signs. Vernon Dursley himself saw it, and he certainly didn't have the imagination to make up something like that!

The cat turned out to be only the tip of the iceberg, because the night after the cat appeared, new, strange things started happening very quickly. A very tall, very old, very odd and obviously eccentric man wearing sweeping robes and half-moon glasses appeared on Privet Drive. He seemed to pull a silver cigarette lighter from his pocket, but when he clicked the button that should have lit a flame, the nearest streetlamp went out and a ball of light flew into the cigarette lighter. The same thing happened several more times, until all the lights were out.

The old man began to walk calmly along the street toward the cat, but halfway there, he lost sight of the tiny green lights that were the cat's eyes. There was a loud clanging as he walked into a metal trash can, and a sort of soft snuffle from the cat.

"I suppose you find that amusing, Professor McGonagall?"

As the man reached number four, he found, not a cat, but a solemn-looking woman with a tight bun and emerald green robes. "Of course not, Professor Dumbledore," said McGonagall stiffly.

Dumbledore sat down on the wall of number four next to McGonagall and asked, "So, why have you been sitting no a wall all day, instead of celebrating with everyone else? And would you like a lemon drop?"

"I was waiting to speak with you, Albus," McGonagall answered. "And what in the name of Merlin is a lemon drop?"

"A lemon drop is a Muggle candy, Minerva. I am quite fond of them; they are quite good. So, then -- would you like a lemon drop?"

"No, thank you," McGonagall answered, changing the subject. "Are the rumors true, Albus? Is He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named gone at last?"

"Ah, it seems so, Minerva Dumbledore said seriously. "However, I would much appreciate it if you would use his proper name. All this You-Know-Who and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named nonsense! There is no reason to fear calling him Voldemort."

With a gasp, McGonagall slipped off the wall and into a hedge. As she picked herself up, she distinctly heard a chuckle from the wall. When she resumed her seat, she asked stiffly, "I suppose you find that amusing, Albus?"

"Of course not, Minerva. Lemon drop?"

McGonagall sighed and said again, "No, thank you." Then she went on with what she had been wanting to say: "Albus, have you heard what everyone is saying? They say that, last night, You-Know -- oh, all right -- _Voldemort_ found his way into Godric's Hollow. They're saying that he found Lily and James and that -- that they're --"

"I'm afraid it's true, Minerva. Lemon drop?"

McGonagall's face lost all color and she turned to the house, not wanting to look at Dumbledore. "Oh, no -- I couldn't believe it -- I didn't want to believe it!"

"There, there," Dumbledore said, patting her on the back. "It's not all bad news, after all. Care for a lemon drop?"

McGonagall ignored this, and went on, "Then, is it true -- that little Harry -- he survived the Killing Curse? And that's why Voldemort is gone?"

"Indeed it is, Minerva. No one knows why, but when Voldemort failed to kill Harry, his power somehow broke. And so I am here now to deliver Harry to his aunt and uncle while leaving them only a letter to explain everything and not checking up on them for ten years! Nothing could go wrong with that plan! So -- would you like a lemon drop?"

McGonagall was silent for a moment, as if considering this, before she spoke. "So, where _is_ Harry?" she asked, completely ignoring the irrationality of Dumbledore's comments. Perhaps McGonagall was one of those inobservant, stupid people in Surrey. Or perhaps she just trusted Dumbledore. Or perhaps both.

"Hagrid is bringing him."

"You entrusted him to Hagrid? You left the boy who... well... lives, I guess.. in the hands of a man who got expelled in this third year but still does illegal magic?"

"I would trust Hagrid with my wife."

McGonagall stared. "What did you say?"

"So sorry; I had a lemon drop stuck to the roof of my mouth. I meant to say, 'I would trust Hagrid with my life.' Lemon drop, Minerva?" he added into the silence that followed.

As if on cue, there was a great rumbling sound and a light fell from the sky. Dumbledore and McGonagall were blinded, and as they tried to stand up, they knocked into each other and went sprawling into the dirt. There was a laugh from the general direction of the light.

"I suppose you find that amusing, Hagrid?" asked both Dumbledore and McGonagall at once.

"O' course not, professors," Hagrid answered. "It seems that li'l Harry did, though, sir."

A giant of a man stepped off of the huge motorcycle that was giving off both the light and the roaring sound. He had a little bundle in his arms, a little bundle that was moving.

Dumbledore had regained his feet by now, and had pulled the silver-cigarette-lighter-looking-thingamabob from his pocket again. With a click, the light from the motorcycle's headlight had gone spinning into the cigarette lighter, as well.

"'Ey!" Hagrid objected. "Tha's not my bike, Professor Dumbledore, sir! Young Sirius Black lent it to me, I have ta return it with the ligh' workin'!"

"Don't shine it in our eyes, then, Hagrid," McGonagall said irritibly. "I expect Albus can return it later, anyway -- and keep your voice down, you'll wake the Muggles!"

Dumbledore, however, was staring at the bundle in Hagrid's arms. "He's supposed to be asleep," he told Hagrid incredulously.

"'Arry was asleep, sir," Hagrid answered. "Fell asleep as we was flyin' over Bristol. Bu' then I almos' dropped him and he woke up again."

"You almost dropped him," McGonagall repeated faintly.

"Tha's wha' I said, ain't it?" Hagrid asked shiftily before he admitted, "All righ', so I _did_ drop him. Bu' I caught him, too, so no harm done."

Dumbledore objected, "But he's supposed to be asleep!"

"You rock 'im ter sleep, then," Hagrid said, handing Dumbledore the bundle which contained a baby boy with jet-black hair, green eyes, and a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.

"Is that scar -- where the curse --" McGonagall began, but when she couldn't seem to get out the question, Dumbledore answered serenely, "Yes. He'll have it forever." There was a pause, and then he asked the boy, "Harry, would you like a lemon drop?"

"You can't give the boy candy," McGonagall interrupted. "He'll never sleep that way!"

"All right, then," Dumbledore said quietly. Then, with a sigh, he put the baby boy down on the doorstep of number four.

"What are you doing?" McGonagall interrupted; perhaps she wasn't so stupid, after all. "If you leave Harry there, he could crawl off and get lost anywhere!"

"But -- he's supposed to be asleep!" Dumbledore objected again. With a sigh, McGonagall picked up the baby and began rocking him, singing softly under her breath.

Hagrid looked at Dumbledore. Dumbledore looked at Hagrid. Hagrid scratched his head. Dumbledore tapped his finger on his leg.

"There," McGonagall said at last, after laying the now sleeping Harry back on the doorstep. "Was that so difficult?"

"Er.. yeah, I'd say i' was," Hagrid answered, looking at Dumbledore.

Dumbledore looked at McGonagall. McGonagall looked at Hagrid. Hagrid looked at Dumbledore. Dumbledore glanced at them both and asked, "Would either of you care for a lemon drop?"

"A wha'?" Hagrid asked, but McGonagall interrupted, "We had best be going, Albus."

"True, very true," Dumbledore said, pulling the silver cigarette lighter back out of his pocket again. He clicked it once and the balls of light flew back to the streetlamps, and to the motorcycle.

Hagrid tried to get back to the bike, but as he was blinded by the light, he tripped over it instead and fell to the ground with a loud crash. There was the sound of a half-suppressed laugh from the direction of the two professors, and Hagrid stood up, asking, "I s'pose yeh find tha' amusin', then?"

"Of course not, Hagrid," Dumbledore answered serenely, but McGonagall, who was still shaking as she tried to keep from laughing, said, "Perhaps just a bit."

Hagrid looked at McGonagall. McGonagall looked at Dumbledore. Dumbledore looked at Hagrid. Hagrid mounted the motorcycle and said, "I had bes' get outta here 'fore the Muggles see."

"Yes, and so should we all," Dumbledore said, and he began to walk back in the direction he had come from. He heard the motorcycle fire up and head into the sky, and as he reached the end of Privet Drive, he turned. McGonagall was nowhere to be seen, but there was a gray tabby cat walking out of sight on the other side of the street.

"Best of luck, Harry," Dumbledore said. "Perhaps when you're older, Minerva will let me offer you a lemon drop."


	2. Here, Snakey Snakey Snakey

Disclaimer: I don't own HP or any of the copyrighted stuff.

A/N: Yeah, chapter two was rather a long time in coming, but I had a lot of things going on and didn't really feel like trying to find humor in a HP book. I was ill, I know. XP It's finally here, though, so never fear!

A huge thank you to those of you who reviewed chapter one: **vix of the night**, **Edwit** (Somehow Dumbledore always comes off as somewhat funny in the books, so I increased his eccentricity severalfold for my fic XP), **KiaraMaggie**, **RiftDoggy**, and **lilflyer** (Hehe, the light.. I hadn't really planned on that part originally, it just seemed funny at 3 AM XD)!

And now, for the next chapter...

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**Chapter Two -- Here, Snakey Snakey Snakey**

It had been ten years since that night when little Harry Potter had been left on the doorstep of number four, Privet Drive. The place hardly looked any different. Granted, there were no baby blankets on the front step and no flying motorcycle parked on the front lawn, but the rest of the yard looked exactly the same, right down to the dying begonias under the window.

The inside of the house was the only part that was any different. Now, instead of pictures of a pink beach wall wearing bonnets, there were pictures of a blond boy who looked remarkably like a pig; he was pink-faced, very round, and had a nose almost exactly like your average hog. In fact, he acted rather like a pig, as well; but that's another story.

There were no pictures of the other boy who lived in the house. Harry Potter was still asleep, but he wouldn't be for long. His Aunt Petunia -- a very thin blond woman with a neck like your average crane -- was tapping on door and screeching in her shrill voice, "Get up! Now!"

Harry sat bolt upright -- and hit his head on a beam. He was small and skinny for his age, but even he could sit up and hit his head while in the cupboard under the stairs, and that was where Harry slept.

"Are you up yet?" Aunt Petunia demanded. "Hurry and come watch the bacon! I don't want it to burn on my Duddykins's birthday!"

Harry groaned; he had forgotten all about Dudley's birthday. It didn't help when he got to the kitchen and could barely find the table beneath the mountain of presents piled on top of it. It did give him a silent laugh to notice that most of the tags read things like, "To Dudders, from Auntie Marge" and "For Darling Duddy-Dandy-Diddykins, with love from Mummy."

"How long has the bacon been cooking?" Harry asked as he walked toward the stove.

"I just put it on," Aunt Petunia snapped, "and don't ask questions!"

"But -- I just asked how long the bacon was on! I didn't even mention my scar or my parents or anything acting weird!"

"Yes, well, it's a question just the same, isn't it? And it might lead to more questions about things that we don't want to answer! So no more questions!"

"Yes, Aunt Petunia," Harry said with a sigh.

Uncle Vernon came into the kitchen while Harry was still standing at the stove. "Comb your hair!" he roared. "And cut it, while you're at it! And maybe get rid of that infernal scar!"

"How am I supposed to do _that_?" Harry asked incredulously.

"Don't talk back to me!"

Uncle Vernon took a seat at the table and Harry shook his head. His aunt and uncle were bonkers, he just knew it.

"Here comes the birthday boy!" Aunt Petunia cried as she brought Dudley into the kitchen with her hands over his eyes. "Here's Dinky-Diddy-Dudley-Dor!" She took her hands off Dudley's eyes and he immediately ran for the table -- or, at least, waddled over as quickly as he could. Unfortunately, that was a bit too quickly for Dudley, and he couldn't stop himself before crashing into the table. He landed on top of the presents, which crushed the table, which pinned Uncle Vernon on the very bottom.

"My little Didley-Dudder-Dash fell down!" Aunt Petunia shrieked, and Harry watched in amazement as she tried to haul Dudley off of the presents, the table, and Uncle Vernon. Aunt Petunia could barely lift Dudley's right arm, so she mostly just tugged at him and screamed until he finally managed to get up.

Uncle Vernon came climbing out from under the collapsed table next, looking distinctly ruffled with his thick moustache hanging off his face. He noticed this quickly and smoothed it back down, but Harry was goggling at him.

"That moustache is FAKE!?" he cried, astounded.

"Of course it isn't!" Uncle Vernon bellowed, but as he did so, he blew the moustache completely off and had to pick it up and hold it on his face.

"Then why did it just come off!?"

"What did we say about questions, boy!?" Uncle Vernon roared, turning purple in the face.

"But it doesn't have _anything_ to do with my scar or my parents or anything mysterious!"

"It could lead to things like that, boy, and it's always a convenient excuse if I don't want to tell you something! So no more questions!"

So Harry reluctantly went back to watching the bacon, Uncle Vernon went to glue his moustache back on, and Dudley poked around the collapsed table, trying to count his presents and make sure that he hadn't broken any important ones. Aunt Petunia had just come back from setting the dining room table (as they could no longer use the kitchen one) when Dudley walked over to her looking angry.

"There are only thirty-six presents!" he said furiously, pointing to the pile. "That's two less than last year!"

"You didn't count Auntie Marge's present," Aunt Petunia said, pointing to a flattened box that had been half crushed beneath the table.

"That's only -- one.. two.. three..."

"Thirty-seven, Diddy-Duddykins."

Harry stood back, not wanting to be on the receiving end of this Dudley tantrum. Aunt Petunia obviously saw it coming, too, and said quickly, "And then we'll buy you two more presents in town today. How's that, Duddy-Dinky-Dane?"

Dudley screwed his face up, trying to think. "So that will make thirty... thirty... thirty-four?"

"Thirty-_nine_, sweetums."

"Oh; okay, then," said Dudley, and he began to unwrap the first one.

Just then the phone rang, and Aunt Petunia answered it. She didn't seem to like whatever was being said; in fact, she yelled, "WHAT!?" so loudly that Uncle Vernon came in from the other room with his moustache dangling off his face, only half glued on. He managed to fix it while waiting for Aunt Petunia to get off the phone, and when she did, she looked like she had just been force-fed a poisonous mushroom.

"Mrs. Figg has broken her leg," she said quietly. "She can't take him." She jerked her head at Harry, and Uncle Vernon bellowed, "WHAT!?" Several sparrows who had been chirping from the bushes outside flew away, frightened by the noise. Harry jumped, too, dropping a piece of bacon in the floor. It was a mark of how serious the situation was that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia did not notice it.

"What on earth can we do with him?" Uncle Vernon was asking. "He can't stay _here_!"

"I don't know -- there isn't anywhere to send him," Aunt Petunia answered.

"What about your friend Yvonne?"

"She's on vacation in Majorca."

"Marge?"

"Of course not, she hates him!"

"Friedrich?"

Aunt Petunia stared. "Who?"

"Your cousin's nephew's friend's brother's mother-in-law's neighbor's aunt's fourth cousin thrice removed."

"Oh, _him_," Aunt Petunia said, and Harry blinked; it certainly seemed like they would go to any lengths to get rid of him today. "The name is Francis, dear, and he died six months ago."

"Died? How?"

"Some strange incident with an exploding toilet."

Everyone in the kitchen stared at her. Dudley recovered first, and he screwed his face up and began to wail: "Mum, I don't _want_ him to have to come! Don't let him come, I don't want him to ruin everything..."

"Don't worry, Didder-Duddy-Darry-Dasher-Dancypants!"

A dead silence fell. Harry and Uncle Vernon stared at her, at a loss for words. Dudley had stopped crying and was looking at her like she had just announced that she was from Mars. At last, Uncle Vernon cleared his throat and began, "Er, Petunia, dear..."

Just then, the doorbell rang, and Dudley jumped. "Piers is here!" he shouted, and ran off to answer the door. Aunt Petunia looked at Uncle Vernon. Uncle Vernon looked at Harry. Harry poked a bit of chocolate that had fallen out of one of Dudley's smashed presents and tried not to look suspicious.

The next thing Harry knew, he was on his way to the zoo for the first time ever. Suddenly everything seemed interesting: the car, the streets, the buildings, the sky, the pattern of Dudley's horrible brown-with-orange-puff-balls sweater...

Dudley and Piers couldn't wait to see the reptile house, but Uncle Vernon said that must wait until after lunch. So they looked around the zoo for a while (Harry noticed a gorilla that looked rather like Dudley and an anteater which he could have sworn was Piers's long lost brother) and then they had lunch. Nothing really eventful happened, unless you counted Aunt Petunia called Dudley "Diddy-Dudder-Dally-Dasher-Drywall" as they were all given strange looks by the people sitting at the next table.

The reptile house was dark and cool; it reminded Harry of the cupboard under the stairs. Dudley and Piers found the biggest snake there and immediately set about torturing it by throwing things at the glass which kept it separate from them and shouting at the top of their lungs. Eventually, they got bored when the snake didn't wake up, and Harry paused by the tank to watch it.

"Sorry about them," he told it absently. "They don't get it at all, do they?"

The snake looked up at him, winked, and suddenly a voice hissed, "No, they don't."

Harry blinked and yelled, but of course, the Dursleys didn't notice. After a moment, he looked back at the snake; it was still watching him. "Did you just speak to me?" he asked uncertainly.

"Yesss," the snake answered, bobbing its head.

"Wow. I've never talked to a snake before."

"I've never talked to a pink-skinned bipedal creature before."

Harry blinked. "A pink-skinned what?"

The snake shook its head. "Never mind. Say, brother, any way you can get me outta here?"

"Not that I know of," Harry answered honestly; but just then Dudley came running over, yelling, "Piers, it's moving! It's moving!"

He knocked Harry to the ground, and as Harry hit the floor, several people screamed. He looked up to see that the glass on the front of the snake's exhibit was gone, and Dudley and Piers were backing away, screaming like frightened two-year-old girls. The snake was staring at them without moving, as if confused.

"Hurry, if you're coming!" Harry said suddenly. "The glass is gone!"

The snake slithered forward cautiously, and Harry heard the thump as its heavy body hit the stone floor. "I thought you said you couldn't let me out," it said.

"I didn't -- at least, if I did, I don't know how I did it."

"_Right_, of course." It winked again. "I got you. Well, thanksss, amigo."

And it slithered off, leaving Harry lying there on the floor with a very angry-looking Vernon Dursley frowning down at him as Aunt Petunia could be heard in the distance wailing, "My Dunder-Daily-Dafty-Dooren-Didder-Dudsy-Duchess!"


	3. Because the Plot Says So

Disclaimer: I don't own HP or any of the copyrighted stuff.

A/N: So I seriously fell out of touch with this story for a really long time... mostly because of my poor copy of SS which is so battered and is quite literally falling apart. XD But I just had a random desire to write this story and so hopefully if I actually do that and don't waste time, I can finish this story and get on to the sequel and I won't have to worry about the book. :P Bear in mind that this was written in a state of severe sleep deprivation and sugarhigh... XD

Thank you (and a chocolate chip cookie apiece!) to those of you who reviewed chapter two: **Reneey Umbra**, **KiaraMaggie**, and **ChrissyWhissy**!

* * *

**Chapter Three -- Because the Plot Says So**

By the time Harry was allowed out of his cupboard again, most of Dudley's birthday presents were gone. Some of them he had broken, but he had also eaten a catcher's mitt, thinking it was beef jerky, and broken a mirror because he thought it was a television and couldn't figure out how to change the channel. Unfortunately, Harry had laughed at this, which had caused him to be given another week in the cupboard...

So once Harry actually made it outside again, he looked relatively like a scraggly, black-haired ghost. He actually overheard one of the neighbors saying that he looked like he had died, but then a second neighbor had gone pale, as well, and ran back into her house screaming something about Z-Day, whatever that meant.

But the fact that it was already summer was a good thing, because it meant that it was hot outside and Dudley hated the hot, so he would stay inside with air conditioning and video games and a mother who called him Diddy Dumpling Dazykins. The only exercise Dudley ever seemed to get was when he was beating up Harry; but in the summertime, he rarely got up long enough to do anything more than threaten Harry. So it was a win-win type thing. If you counted Dudley's getting to sit and laze his way closer to a heart attack by the second a win...

Of course, Dudley did have a fashion show that summer. Or really an unfashionable show, because Harry doubted that anyone would call the Smelting uniform fashion. It was so very hard not to laugh at the uniform itself, and he just couldn't manage it any more when Dudley turned around too fast and hit himself in the head with the knobbly stick he was carrying. Actually, Harry was at a bit of a loss as to how Dudley Dursley could possibly turn that fast, anyway... then came to the conclusion that he must have slipped on Aunt Petunia's overwaxed kitchen floor.

It was a fairly ordinary Tuesday morning when Harry got up and came downstairs after washing up in the upstairs bathroom. He tripped over a neighbor girl's jump rope which Dudley had stretched across the stairs to trip him, fell down the rest of the flight of stairs, landed in a stack of fruitcakes from last Christmas that even Dudley hadn't been able to scarf down, possibly received a concussion from hitting his head on one of the harder ones, picked himself up, walked into the kitchen to throw the fruitcakes away, smelled something really foul and saw Aunt Petunia stirring a tub of elephant skin in the sink... Wait, Aunt Petunia usually only skinned elephants on Fridays!

Raising his eyebrows and dumping the fruitcake on the table since he had already forgotten about throwing them away, Harry turned and walked toward her. It was then that he got a closer look at the contents of the tub in the sink. No, not elephant skin, it wasn't wrinkly enough. Maybe rhino?

"What are you doing?" he asked slowly, and Aunt Petunia suddenly jumped two feet in the air, throwing up her arms and a piece of the gray stuff as she went. This might not have been a problem were it not for the fact that she also let go of it, and so it went sailing into the air before landing with a splat on top of her head. She shrieked something incoherent (possibly because it was muffled by the bit of... well, whatever it was) before landing too hard on her own overwaxed floor, slipping, and falling to the ground.

As the piece of gray stuff came flying across the kitchen floor toward him, Harry blinked at it. No way, it was... fuzzy? What exactly was Aunt Petunia doing!?

"Don't scare me like that!" she shrieked as she pulled herself up on the kitchen sink with shaking arms. "And don't ask questions!"

"But I just want to know what you were doing with -- what _is_ this, anyway!?"

"Why, it's ferret fur, of course!"

Harry stared at her. He just couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice as he repeated, "Of course. Right. Because there are usually dead ferrets floating in the kitchen sink when I get up in the mornings and so I should automatically know that."

"Shut up and give it back to me!" Aunt Petunia snapped. "I have to finish dying it gray so I can move on to your school things!"

Harry almost panicked at that. "My school clothes aren't made of ferret fur, are they!?"

Unfortunately, Uncle Vernon and Dudley chose that moment to walk in, and Dudley objected, "Mum! You're not giving him the fur for my good ferret fur coat, are you!?"

It was a moment before Harry was able to find it safe to breathe without laughing at the absurd mental image he got in his head at that. Of course, that was just like Dudley, to have something as bizarre as that for a coat. Though Harry's aunt and uncle would never cease to amaze him with their sheer stupidity... And they went off on him for talking about things behaving like they should when _they_ didn't behave like they should!

A more sobering thought, on the other hand, was wondering just how many ferrets had died for a tremendous undertaking like this.

"Of course not, Didderary-Dandelion-Diptky!" Aunt Petunia crooned in that voice that made Harry want to gag.

"Why is there a gray streak on the floor?" Uncle Vernon wondered suddenly.

Aunt Petunia turned three shades of gray herself, at that. "Gr-gray on the floor!?" she repeated almost disbelievingly before turning around and looking at her clean kitchen floor... and screaming like a banshee.

Harry covered his ears, Uncle Vernon grimaced, and Dudley just went on eating his sausage like nothing had happened. Of course, he probably hadn't noticed that anything had.

"MY FLOOR!" Aunt Petunia shrieked, abandoning the kitchen sink and pulling a mop from the closet. "IT'S FILTHY! MY FLOOORRR!"

There was a sound at the mail flap which Uncle Vernon somehow heard over the shrieking. Harry could have sworn that his uncle had a bat's ears, at times. Of course, at other times, he was about as observant as a blind man. But in this particular instance, it involved making someone else do something, so of course he heard it.

"Dudley, go get the mail."

"Make Harry get it!"

"Harry, go get the mail."

"Make Aunt Petunia do it!"

"Petunia --"

"MY FLOOR! MY PRECIOUS CLEAN FLOOR!"

Uncle Vernon made a skeptical sort of look and started over: "Dudley, go get the mail."

"MAKE HARRY DO IT!"

"Harry, go get the mail."

"Make Aunt Pe --"

"NOOO, MY FLOOR... MY PRECIOUS... MY LOVELY FLOOR..."

Even Dudley stopped to stare at her, then. Well, he didn't exactly stop; he still continued shoving food into his mouth. But he did stare at his mother almost incredulously. "Mum! Did you just call something else precious!? Aren't I your only precious!?"

Silence. Harry thought he might have had a heart attack as he watched his aunt continue to scrub on the floor. And completely ignore Dudley.

Apparently Dudley was feeling the same way, because he suddenly wailed, "Mummy, you're ignoring me!"

"SHUT UP, DUDLEY!"

Dead silence fell. All except for the continued scrubbing of the floor. Dudley broke it, at long last, with a whimper.

"Er -- Harry -- go get the mail," Uncle Vernon said, probably just to have something to say.

For once, Harry didn't argue. He got up and left just to get away from the insanity that was the Dursley kitchen this morning. Sad for him that he didn't realize his day was only going to get stranger.

As he retrieved the mail and sorted through it, he saw something. A letter with his name on it. A letter with his cupboard on it. A letter written in emerald ink on paper that looked totally ancient. And was really, really heavy, too.

Surely there could be no harm in taking said strange letter back into the kitchen with the newly insane Dursleys who hated all things odd. After all, the letter wasn't odd. It was positively bizarre. Which wasn't the same thing, right?

Oh, whoops. Apparently it was, because Uncle Vernon suddenly stole it. Darn the Dursleys and their hatred for anything related to Harry. Darn them all to heck!

... Or something like that, anyway.

"That's my letter!" Harry objected once he was done with his little mental ranting.

"Who'd waste perfectly awful old paper and murky green ink on writing you a letter?" Uncle Vernon asked. Then he paused and mused, "Actually, that is about the right quality of letter for you... but that's not the point! I'm reading it anyway!"

"Why!?"

"Because I can -- and because you just asked a question!"

"But I only asked a question after you stole my letter!"

"It doesn't matter! The question has been asked! And so you can no longer object!"

He closed the subject by ripping the letter open. Within ten seconds, he had turned every color from lilac to baby blue. Once, Harry was sure his uncle's face looked plaid.

"PETUNIA!"

"MY FLOOORRR!"

"FORGET THE FLOOR! HARRY GOT A LETTER!"

"MY FLOO -- wait, what kind of letter!?"

Dudley was astounded. "Mum! You yell at me to shut up but you stop scrubbing the floor because _Harry got a letter_!?"

Petunia didn't answer; she just stared at the letter, gasped, and keeled over in a dead faint. Nobody really noticed, because Dudley chose that moment to grab the letter and run -- well, waddle at top speed -- away.

"I wanna read that!" Harry yelled.

"NO! NO ONE READS IT!" Uncle Vernon thundered, but just then, Dudley grabbed a lighter from his pocket and set the thick paper on fire, waving it in the air and cackling, "TAKE THAT, EVIL PAPER!"

Harry stared, and Uncle Vernon's jaw dropped. "Hey!" he objected. "That's my job!"

Dudley didn't seem to notice; he was busy throwing the paper in a waste bin and doing a war dance around it, cackling insanely and yelling, "THAT'LL TEACH YOU TO DISTRACT MY MUM FROM ME!"

Uncle Vernon approached and looked down into the wastebasket forlornly. "I was supposed to get to burn it!"

There was a manic gleam in Dudley's eye as he growled, "Now that that evil paper's been taught a lesson... I must beat some sense into the floor!"

Dudley suddenly began pounding on the floor with all his might. Harry thought Uncle Vernon might stop him, but instead the man gave a strange shifty sort of look around, grabbed Harry by the arm, and dragged him into the hall.

"I didn't do anything!" Harry objected reflexively.

"No, I'm not going to punish you this time," Uncle Vernon said. Again, Harry felt a heart attack coming on for sure; he hadn't known that his uncle was capable of saying those words all together in a sentence like that.

"Then -- then what is it?" Harry asked, confused.

"Don't ask questions!" Uncle Vernon bellowed, also reflexively. Then he sighed, shook his head, and said, "Listen, Harry. You need to move upstairs, into Dudley's second bedroom."

Harry blinked. "What?"

"What did I say about questions!? Just listen!"

"Did... but... Dudley's second bedroom," Harry repeated, completely confused.

"Yes!" Uncle Vernon said brightly. "It will be very important to the plot later that you have a bedroom and not just a cupboard!"

"... What?"

"Er, nothing," Uncle Vernon said, suddenly laughing strangely. "Just go get your things and take them upstairs!"

He shoved Harry toward the cupboard just as there was a sudden shriek from the kitchen which announced that Petunia Dursley was conscious.

"AHHH HOW DID ALL THESE SCUFF MARKS GET ON MY PRECIOUS FLOOORRR!?"

* * *

The next day was somewhat less insane. There were no random things dyeing in the sink when Harry got up, Aunt Petunia had scrubbed the floor to its former spotless state, and Dudley wasn't even visible behind a huge pile of sausages, eggs, bacon, and pancakes. Pretty much your average day. Until the mail came.

"Dudley, go get the mail," Uncle Vernon ordered.

"Make Harry get it."

"No, you go get it," Uncle Vernon insisted.

Dudley was appalled. "Why!?"

"Because it's plot relevant! Just go get the mail!"

Dudley glared, but went, and a moment later, there was a sound like an explosion as he yelled from the hall, "GAH, MORE EVIL LETTERS! DIE, DIE, DIE!"

There was the sound of paper ripping, and Uncle Vernon looked up, confused, to see Dudley running -- as close as Dudley had ever gotten to running, anyway -- back into the kitchen while stabbing with a pocketknife some already very mangled yellowish paper.

"Hey, stop that!" Harry and Uncle Vernon yelled at once.

"You're supposed to bring them to me so I can rip them up!" Uncle Vernon added, but it was too late. Dudley had shoved them into the sink and turned on the garbage disposal.

* * *

So the NEXT morning, Harry decided that he would get a jump on his uncle and cousin. If he got to the mail first and didn't tell them about it, then he could read his letters! Yeah, it really took him three days to come up with that plan. Apparently he's pretty stupid, even for an eleven-year-old.

As he was walking to the door in the darkness before dawn, he suddenly stepped on something. Something squooshy. Something which was also remotely bouncy. Ooh, awesome! Somebody had left a trampoline in the middle of the floor in the hall! And so Harry jumped, went flying a good two feet in the air, and yelled, "WHEEE!" at the top of his lungs. Yeah. Because he was still stupid for an eleven-year-old and kept forgetting to be quiet.

"What the devil!?"

The sound came out of nowhere, Harry thought, and so he jumped on the trampoline again, went sailing into the air again... and hit the door so hard that his newly retaped glasses broke in half.

"Boy!" the voice thundered again, and suddenly the lights flickered on so fast that they dazzled Harry's already dazed eyes and he found himself sprawled on the floor, broken glasses hanging off of one ear, and staring up at Uncle Vernon, who had slipper footprints on the front of his face.

"Uh... where'd the trampoline go?"

Harry was saved from a likely imminent death by the arrival of the mail. Uncle Vernon whirled with fire in his eyes, intent on finally getting to destroy the letters; but just then, Dudley rolled down the stairs, yelling like a lunatic, doused them with lighter fluid, and set them on fire right where they lay on the hall carpet. Aunt Petunia appeared out of nowhere to shriek as Uncle Vernon yelled, "Confound it, boy, let me at some of those letters!"

* * *

And that was how the week went for the Dursleys and Harry Potter. Every morning, there was a mad dash for the door; and every morning, Dudley's newfound vengeance for the mail won out. On Saturday, he actually threw rocks at the postman and told him never to come back with any more of those evil, mad letters. The postman then ran away, muttering something under his breath about how the letters weren't the things around here that were mad and evil.

Sunday morning, Harry got up to find Dudley waiting at the door with a rifle, waiting to see if the postman would show, before Uncle Vernon reminded him that there was no post on Sundays. To them, it seemed to be a relief, but to Harry, it was quite annoying. He wanted to read his letters!

"Petunia, dear?" Uncle Vernon asked as they sat quietly in the living room.

"Yes?"

"Did we ever get that letter about an order for drills?"

Aunt Petunia pursed her lips. "I believe it was the victim of Thursday's incident with the flamethrower."

There was a sudden rumbling sound, and Dudley suddenly sprang to his feet, pulling the rifle from beneath the cushion he had been sitting on. Unfortunately, this had caused the barrel to become warped, but he didn't seem to notice that.

"Is it an earthquake!?" Aunt Petunia shrieked. "Noooo! My good china!"

"EVIL CHINA!" Dudley suddenly yelled, and threw the rifle at the china cabinet. "TAKE THAT!"

There was no time for any reaction to his newest mental breakdown, because just then hundreds of letters started pouring through the fireplace, shooting into the room, knocking Uncle Vernon's not-fake-but-which-somehow-still-needed-glue-to-stay-on moustache off. Dudley screamed incoherently and threw a chair at the fireplace before curling up in a fetal position on the floor; Harry dodged the chair and then grabbed a letter at random, again attempting to open it instead of attempting to hide it and read it later. Apparently he never learned.

Uncle Vernon bellowed something nobody understood, tore the letter from Harry's hands, and promptly threw Harry, Dudley, and Petunia out the door, where they landed in a heap and Aunt Petunia was nearly smothered beneath Dudley's weight before he finally managed to get up.

"THAT'S IT!" Uncle Vernon yelled, looking very odd and strangely lost without the moustache which had been misplaced in the heap of incoming letters. "THEY HAVE TAKEN MY MOUSTACHE, THEY SHALL NOT TAKE MY LIFE! WE ARE LEAVING NOW!"

* * *

It was a very long car ride, to wherever they were going. Uncle Vernon kept going around in circles, nearly driving off of overpasses into oncoming traffic, and it was two full hours before he stopped to buy a new totally-not-fake-even-though-he-had-to-pay-money-for-it-and-then-glue-it-on moustache. Once he even started doing donuts in a parking lot until Aunt Petunia shrieked that they were going to hit a lamppost.

He seemed to be doing his very best to lose whoever was sending the letters, and yet the letters kept arriving, wherever they went. Even when he resorted to a camping ground in the middle of nowhere, they turned up stuffed inside a port-a-john. After that, Uncle Vernon started to get very shaky -- though part of that might have been because Dudley had bitten him and nearly taken his arm off in an attempt to get all the letters over a cliff and into a river as soon as humanly possible.

And for some reason, Uncle Vernon was still mad that he never got to destroy the letters himself.

Harry was really starting to worry about his uncle. Well, really he wasn't worrying so much about Vernon Dursley as he was about what would happen to the rest of them when Vernon and Dudley finally lost it. Although Harry wasn't honestly sure that they hadn't already...

The newest harebrained scheme was just the sort that Harry had been dreading. It was the kind that might get them killed, true, but even worse -- it was the kind that might actually _work_.

"Are there evil letters in the rock on the water?" Dudley asked shiftily during the long boat ride.

"No," Uncle Vernon answered certainly.

"Is there anyone else there?" Aunt Petunia asked, next. She had been getting shifty, too, what with not having been able to spy on any neighbors lately.

"Some cockroaches and two colonies of ants, according to the other," Uncle Vernon replied cheerily, followed by a mad laugh. "And it's going to storm tonight!"

"That's a good thing?" Harry asked with raised eyebrows.

"NO QUESTIONS!" Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia yelled at once.

"But, yes, it is," he admitted sheepishly a moment later.

It was a moment before Harry worked up the nerve to ask, "Why...?"

And it was a moment longer before Uncle Vernon suddenly blinked and said confusedly, "I'm not sure. But the plot says I should be happy about it, whether or not it is putting my own life and the lives of my family members in life-threatening danger, and so happy I am!"

"Mum?" Dudley asked. "What is this plot Dad keeps talking about?" He suddenly went pale and demanded, "It's not a cemetery plot, is it!? NOOOO, I CAN'T DIE BEFORE I VANQUISH THE EVIL LETTER SENDER! AND SEE THAT DAVID COPPERFIElD SPECIAL NEXT MONDAY!"


End file.
